deceitful description of goods and services OR misleading designation of goods and services

[apoziopeza]

Hi,

Please advise, which of the phrase below do you prefer? It should be included in somebody's biography.

Thanks,

A.

He also advises on completion law, unfair competition (including deceitful description of goods and services, contributing towards mistaken identity, parasitic exploitation of a competitor’s reputation, protection of trademark and trade secret protection.

deceitful description of goods and services OR misleading designation of goods and services

 

[owlman5]

I have no strong preference here. Both "deceitful" and "misleading" look normal and mean roughly the same thing. "Deceitful" sounds a little worse than "misleading", but there's no real difference in meaning between those words in this phrase.

 

[By-the-sea]

The phrase used in the UK is 'misleading description'. Perhaps it's a US/UK difference but I have never seen deceitful used in this context.

 

[Keith Bradford]

The phrase used in the UK is 'misleading description'. Perhaps it's a US/UK difference but I have never seen deceitful used in this context.

 

[Packard]

The boots I ordered from Amazon.com clearly stated in the description that they were "made in the USA". The boots arrived with a sewn in label that said, "Made in China."

I wrote that the product was "misrepresented" and asked that they correct the description.

I believe that "misrepresented" is the more commonly used than the other choices suggested.

 

[Dale Texas]

I also would use "misleading/misrepresented."

(I suspect, but don't know, that in legal cases "deceitful" might imply a certainty that something was done by all the parties involved in collusion -- a conspiracy by the manufacturer, the seller, the advertiser, etc.-- with a willing and conscious intention to defraud, a contention that might be difficult to prove in any further legal actions.)

Misleading allows for the fact that some kind of accident of labeling at the factory, or misinforming of Amazon, may have caused the problem, and allows for a more graceful and quicker resolution to the customer.

 

[Packard]

[...] or misinforming of Amazon, may have caused the problem [...]

Except that Amazon never made the correction even after several emails from me pointing out the "misinformation". So in light of the fact that I've informed them of the problem, does that change the descriptor from "misrepresentation" to "deceit"?

I will have to think about that a bit.

 

[pob14]

Since the OP seems to be about a lawyer, I think it would depend entirely on the legal definition of "deceitful" in the relevant jurisdiction. A bit of Googling combined with the OP's location suggests to me that the relevant definition would be found in the Commercial Code of the Slovak Republic, and I'm not digging any farther into that. What I found seemed to be a (somewhat?) official translation, so I would stick with "deceitful."